The costs are all about "validation" of the SSL Certificate Owner.
With Thawte / Verisign, they run back ground checks on the company and verify they are who they say they are. That type of investigation is labor intensive and costs real $$.
GeoTrust uses a automated phone call system for owner verification and that costs money, but much less than Verisign.
Not sure what GoDaddy uses, but at $20 it can't be much of anything.
That being said most people only care about the SSL "lock" in the browser. They don't care what you spent on the SSL cert.
-----Original message-----
From: "Nan Harbison" nan at nanharbison.com
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:00:52 -0800
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] purchasing a SLL certificate
> Hi all,
>> Can someone please explain in easy to understand language why SSL
> certificates come in a several varieties, with different prices, some prices
> being in the hundreds of dollars, and some are cheap - godaddy sells one for
> $20.
>> When I ask tech support, they say it has to do with the validation, but
> doesn't that mean that it proves who we the company accepting credit card
> payment for services? When I purchase an item online, I always check for the
> lock in the lower right corner of the window, but knowing whether the
> company was "validated' and paid much more money for their certificate seems
> totally invisible. Maybe I am not understanding this at all?
>> TIA
>> nan
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